Digital media distribution has been impacted by the increase in image and sound formats. This increase has impacted the size and number of digital media packages used to distribute media to end users in the multitude of desired formats. It is expected that image and sound formats will continue to diversify as new formats are created. Accommodating delivery for new projection and display technologies that deliver increased resolution, brightness, color gamut, and contrast in addition to new, multiple sound formats alongside the existing multiple delivery specifications necessary to serve digital cinema and subsequent digital distribution present significant logistical fulfillment challenges.
To accommodate the diversity of playback devices available to consumers, media creators and distributors generally create, store, and maintain individual and distinct media file versions of a particular production or content file. For example, for any given television show or movie production, individual media version files may need to be maintained for standard definition, high definition, ultra-high definition, 16:9 pixel ratio, 4:3 pixel ratio, varying language formats, varying content formats and censorship formats, varying color formats, varying sound formats, and any other media file attributes as known in the art, as well as any possible permutation of these different attribute types. Accordingly, the number of media version files that must be maintained becomes increasingly voluminous as image, sound, and content diversity increases.